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Former Yankee Prospect Sentenced

Former Yankee Prospect Sentenced

Former Yankees pitching prospect Brien Taylor was sentenced to 38 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to distributing crack cocaine.

Brien Taylor
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Taylor, 40, said during Wednesday's sentencing hearing that he was sorry for causing pain to his family and his five daughters. "I made poor decisions," he said. Halerie Mahan, Taylor's attorney, declined to comment.

He faces three years of supervised release after his prison term. Taylor, the No. 1 overall selection in the 1991 draft, could have received between 5 and 40 years in prison. He had been in custody since his March arrest for selling crack cocaine and powder cocaine to undercover agents over several months.

—Associated Press

Yankees Prioritize Their Free Agents

Enough time has passed since the Yankees' embarrassing playoff sweep at the hands of the Detroit Tigers that the team is no longer licking its wounds from that tragedy. Instead, the Yankees have moved on to a vexing question: how much of that flawed but successful team should they bring back?

New York Yankees relief pitcher Rafael Soriano
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A stunning 12 Yankees became free agents after this season. So rather than searching for big fish, the Yankees will spend the early weeks of baseball's off-season weighing which of their own players to retain. Those efforts began in earnest Wednesday with the start of baseball's annual General Managers' meetings.

General manager Brian Cashman has one-year, $13.3 million offers out to Rafael Soriano, Nick Swisher and Hiroki Kuroda that they must accept or reject by Friday; the team is hopeful of re-signing Kuroda, while the other two are likely to find multiyear deals elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Cashman said he has talked to the agents for nearly all his other free agents—Russell Martin and Ichiro Suzuki among them. Cashman must also figure out how to coax Andy Pettitte out of retirement and how much to offer Mariano Rivera as he returns from knee surgery. But he expects nothing to happen until Soriano, Kuroda, and Swisher make their decisions.